


There Is Nothing Left

by unconscious



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Coda, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 23:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6774334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unconscious/pseuds/unconscious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to the CIVIL WAR mid-credits scene. Spoilers inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Is Nothing Left

**Author's Note:**

> I crave more emotional substance from CA:CW. Comments/kudos very appreciated :) Title is a song by The Drums.

Steve's hand hovered over the black silicone cap where the arm used to be.

"It's fine," Bucky said, looking over his good shoulder, towards the window and the foggy Wakandan horizon. He was perched on the medical examination table, his shoulders hunched in, rounding his spine. "It doesn't hurt. Just feels weird."

"Weird?" Steve stood in front of him, slightly off to one side, so Bucky could kick his legs out without hitting Steve if he wanted to. He used to be restless. Now he was defined by stillness. Steve flattened his hand on Bucky's shoulder, half on skin, half on metal. Memories flickered: the metal fist clenched above his face on the helicarrier, the way Bucky went still on the floor of the Siberian compound at its loss. 

"Like something's missing," Bucky said. "Like when you locked the door to our place, I watched you do it, but I still had to run up the stairs and make sure."

Steve closed his eyes. "You remember that, huh?"

"Yeah." Bucky shrugged, and Steve pulled his hand away.

When they'd arrived in Wakanda, the doctors had quickly ferried Bucky elsewhere, somewhere in the depths of T'Challa's marble estate. When the doctors emerged, they'd been without Bucky, and they'd spoken to Steve and T'Challa in low voices. Physically, he will be fine, they said, after noting they don't have the time nor resources to rebuild the arm from scratch. But, they added, it's impossible to know the extent of the mental damage. Sometimes he was fine, they said, remembering things, cracking jokes. Then a moment later he'd drift away. Never the attack-dog mode that the code words created, but a pliant half-at-rest state, like he was waiting for the commands to come.

"Okay," Steve had said. "So what's the treatment plan?"

"We ask him what he wants," the doctor had said. "He asked to speak to you."

The room was silent save for the low, consistent hum of the medical machinery. Bucky kept his face turned towards the window, and with his hair tied back his white neck was visible, strangely vulnerable, the tendon standing out. Steve reached out again, without thinking, his hand fitting on the jut of Bucky's jaw, his thumb tucked behind his ear. Bucky turned his head into it, just barely, the slightest bit of pressure that made Steve's heart jump into his throat.

"I'm gonna ask them to put me under again," Bucky said.

Steve jerked his hand back. "What?"

"Put me under," Bucky said. He met Steve's eyes, finally, and his face was sallow, his eyes far away. "Cryo. Freeze me again."

The words were like a physical punch that sent him a step backwards. "Buck-- why?"

"It's not safe," he said, and he was looking at Steve but looking through him, like'd he'd recited this speech to himself so many times that it wasn't even conscious anymore. "Not for me or for anyone else. I can't be out and about while god knows how many people have the magic words that turn me to -- to a fucking murder machine. I gotta stay down until the doctors can figure out how to unscramble my brains."

Steve had seen Bucky in dark colors so often since he emerged from the grave -- the black of his tactical gear, the maroon of his street clothes, dark baseball hats and denim jackets, things that hide dirt and bloodstains and allow him to blend into crowds. And now, as he sat on the exam table in a white tank top and loose white pants, his bare feet unmoving, his hair clean and tied back, it was like he was finally seeing him without the trappings of the Soldier like a shadow. He looked older, his features more defined than they'd been when they were kids, his eyes crow-footed and sunken. And he was muscular, but in a deceptive way, and he held himself with a contained grace like predator.

"That's not the only way to keep you safe," Steve said. 

"I know that," Bucky said. "But it's the best way. I know you, Steve, come on. You wanted to let me punch you to death on that helicarrier."

"That's not--" Steve started, but Bucky was looking at him with his eyebrows raised all the way up. "When you say it like that."

Bucky hopped off the exam table soundlessly. He walked over to the window. "You remember when my sister caught us?"

Now there was a memory. They hadn't talked about their past like that -- though there was a magnetism between them, something unspoken, Steve hadn't pressed. But each night he dreamed about it, about the risky kisses stolen on their fire escape in Brooklyn, about summer nights sleeping on the hardwoods because it was cooler, about their frenetic foxhole love during the war that everyone knew about and no one mentioned.

"Yeah," Steve said, and cleared his throat, because Bucky was so close, standing there barefoot on the cool floors of the medical facility, and they hadn't even hugged yet. "Yeah, I remember that."

"Will you -- tell me? What you remember? Because sometimes things get, uh, mixed up. So I want to know it's right."

"Sure," Steve said, and leaned up against the exam table because he wasn't sure if his legs would hold him up. "Sure. Yeah. My mom had died. So I didn't have any family left. And you had a big family, bunch of siblings, both parents still together but they fought a lot, you didn't like that. So you stayed over a lot. And then you decided, hell, you were old enough, you'd move out. And you decided to move in with me. I think you thought I'd get stuck in my own head if I lived alone, which was probably right. I fell into funks a lot. You always helped-- pull me out of them. Just being around. So, um, we got this horrible new place in Red Hook. Right near the Gowanus Canal. You picked up a lot of jobs there so it was convenient but boy it smelled like shit."

Bucky was silent, standing by the window, his back to Steve, his shoulders a tense line, his head down.

"And so we got this place. And at that point we were-- I don't know, we didn't ever really name what we had together. It was just different. From other friends. We shared a bed. We drank and necked and you took care of me when I got sick. So we had just gotten this place, and it was a fourth-floor walkup. And you worked at the canal that day, and I made pasta and red sauce for dinner. No meat, we couldn't afford it. And you came home and walked in and smelled it and you were so happy, like you couldn't believe I'd actually cooked a hot meal. And I was pretty small at this point, you remember. And we necked a little bit. You smelled so bad from the canal. You had me sitting up on the counter and the pasta getting cold. And in the middle of this your sister busted in -- I'd forgotten I'd invited her over for dinner as a surprise. She was young, she was twelve or something. She was your favorite. And she just busted in the front door without knocking and saw us. And you jumped back about ten feet in one movement. And I was the color of the red sauce, I remember that. And she just looked at us, and asked us if we were in love."

Bucky snorted.

"And--" Steve cleared his throat again, and crossed his arms over his chest. "And you crouched in front of her, and you said 'yeah,' and she said, 'Good.' You asked her not to tell your parents, and she never did."

"She never told anyone."

"Never."

Bucky turned around. His eyes were bloodshot. "That's how I remember it, too." He paused. "But I can't remember my sister's face."

"I've got pictures," Steve said. "I've got a lot of your stuff. I can show you. We can go through it all together. I haven't looked at it."

"Steve."

"Buck," Steve said, "You can't go under again."

"Don't be like that."

"It's not--"

"I know it's not the only way!" Bucky snapped. "But -- I know you, Steve, and if I'm still here in Wakanda doing god-knows-what trying to, I don't know, un-brainwash myself, your attention will never fully be with your team. You know half your attention will always be back here in this room. Worrying about my progress, or lack thereof, or people trying to kill me, or me killing other people."

"That's presumptuous," Steve says.

"I'm right, though."

Steve huffed. 

"Come here," Bucky said.

Steve crossed the room, and with Bucky standing in front of him he was pulled between then and now, half the skinny kid sitting red-faced on the counter in their first apartment, half the man on the helicarrier prepared to die in the river.

Bucky wrapped his arm around Steve's neck, pulling him down. It was strange being taller. Steve wrapped both arms around Bucky's waist so they were flush together and pressed his face into Bucky's neck, exhaling harshly there, inhaling the clean smell of his skin, and he could almost smell the sweat and cheap laundry detergent and Brooklyn dirt that used to always be there.

"It's funny." Bucky tightened his grip as he spoke. "I only remember parts of everything -- before. I don't remember the war. The doctors said that might come back later. But I remember all the killing. All of it."

"Buck." Steve pulled back, his hands still at Bucky's waist. "You--"

"I know it wasn't me," he said. "But it-- it doesn't go away."

Steve stepped in again and pressed his open mouth to Bucky's temple. Bucky sagged against him, his head falling against Steve's shoulder, like strings were cut, like he's been barely able to hold himself up. "I can't take it happening again."

It hurt, physically, a pain in Steve's chest, and he wanted to embrace Bucky hard enough to break his ribs. "We'll get it solved," Steve said. "The doctors here. They'll figure out how to fix it. You won't be under long."

Bucky hummed. Steve felt the vibration through his chest. He pulled out Bucky's hairtie and then carded his fingers through Bucky's hair. "You used to hate it when I did this."

"Never did," Bucky said. "Just said so."

"Why?"

"Knew you'd do it more to annoy me."

They split apart. Bucky walked back to the exam table, stared at its surface, rubbed the place where his metal arm once was.

"You sure you want to do this?" Steve said.

Bucky looked up. His hair hung around his face. His eyes were clear, but bloodshot, and his smile was the same roguish half-smile that haunted Steve's dreams, the one that flickered across Bucky's face all those years ago, in Red Hook, before he tossed Steve on their bed, before they spent their last few dollars on beer instead of bread, before they kissed in full view of the neighbors' window.

"Sure, Stevie," he said. "You'll be here when I wake up?"

The doctors were waiting. Outside a new fog rolled across the Wakandan horizon. Steve wondered if he would ever sleep again.


End file.
